World's fastest forest destruction
Every day, more than forty square kilometres of Sarawak's ancient forests are destroyed by logging in what is the fastest rate of deforestation anywhere.
Millions of logs lie to rot along Sarawak's Baram river while high grade wood goes to Japan for disposable chopsticks, plywood, concrete forms and shipping crates.
If the current rate of deforestation is allowed to continue, all of Sarawak's world heritage rainforests will be gone within three to five years.
Between 60 and 70 percent of the forest cover has already been lost and all remaining forest lands, outside of a few small parks, have been licensed for logging.
Waste levels are appalling. Logs with defects are piled 5 to 10 meters high on both banks for miles along major rivers. Most of these logs will rot where they lie.
Heavily loaded barges ply a steady traffic or raw logs down river where they are transferred to Japanese and other freighters waiting in the South China Sea.
A Japanese timber cartel headed by Mitsubishi Corporation imports into Japan 80 percent of Sarawak's logs. There these logs are converted into plywood for concrete construction forms, boards for packaging material, like that used for shipping motor cycles and other goods to world markets, and even some of them become disposable chopsticks.
Heavily loaded barges
Logs rotting away along river banks
